


B.Y.O.T.

by TasteTheRainbow



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TasteTheRainbow/pseuds/TasteTheRainbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen doesn't want to help Danneel with her stupid craft night at the library, but after meeting the Craft Guy, he's not so much complaining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	B.Y.O.T.

Jensen isn't entirely sure how he got commandeered into helping with this project. He's not the Young Adult librarian, doesn't even work in that section, and there is nothing in his job description about showing up - on his day off, no less - to help a bunch of screeching, teenage girls bedazzle tee shirts. He knows – he checked.

He's pressed against the back wall, arms crossed over his chest, hoping that his assistance won't be necessary. He's got last night's _So You Think You Can Dance_ waiting on his TiVo, and he's really hoping that Danneel, the actual organizer of tonight's event, will just tell him that he can go home. What does he know about screen-printing a tee shirt? Better question might be what does he _care_ about screen-printing a damn tee shirt? 

Staring at the linoleum floor in the program room, Jensen rubs the toe of his shoe over a scuff mark on the floor and prays that nobody will try to talk to him. It's not that he minds helping these girls when they need to find a book or something, but he doesn't really talk to them. Doesn't figure they have a whole lot in common, outside of a fondness for twenty-something models-turned-actors with great abs.

“Hey, man, where's your shirt?”

Jensen looks up, startled, and stumbles against the wall. He doesn't mean to or anything, but the guy standing in front of him – the Craft Guy, as Danneel calls him - is enormous, not to mention hot. Jensen's not so good with the witty rejoinders at times like these. “Um,” is what he manages instead.

Oh, holy shit, Craft Guy's got dimples. And a mega-watt smile. “Don't worry about it. I always bring extra, just in case.” He's gone before Jensen can process a complete thought, but when he returns, there's a pink tee shirt hanging from his fingers. “I thought I had something a little more masculine, but you don't actually have to wear it when we're done, I don't guess.”

This is how Jensen finds himself staring at Craft Guy from the table in the back of the room, pink shirt spread out on the table, brow furrowed. What the hell is he supposed to do with a Pepto-pink shirt? All of the screens are really girly, and the colors are all metallic. At the moment, Jensen's four years of college feel like a colossal waste of money.

“Do you have a sister or somethin'?” Jared – Craft Guy isn't his actual, birth name, it turns out - asks, his shadow falling long over the table. 

Dragging his eyes over the stretch of Jared's black tee shirt – screened with one of the designs the girls have the option of using – Jensen almost wishes he was a little more into this. Or that Jared was a little more out of that tee shirt. Thankfully, the girl sitting at the table beside him shrieks her excitement at the way her shirt turned out, so Jensen is reminded that this is not the time or place to have lusty thoughts about the damn craft guy.

Clearing his throat, Jared squats next to the table, skin brushing Jensen's as he folds his thick arms and rests his chin on them. He's seriously considering Jensen's options. “Girlfriend might like somethin' like this,” he suggests, leaning across Jensen's personal space to grab one of the screens from his pile. 

With a raised eyebrow, Jensen says, “That's a pineapple.”

“It's the symbol of hospitality?” Jared's shoulders shrug as he tosses the screen back on the table and then stands to come around to Jensen's other side. 

“You want me to make my girlfriend a shirt that basically says ' _Everyone's Welcome_ '?” 

Eyes comically wide, Jared drops into the chair at Jensen's side and assures him, “That is so not what I meant.” Holding up another, this one sporting a guitar with angel wings, he swallows hard. “How 'bout this one?” Pressing it to the shirt at an asymmetrical angle, he tilts his head to consider. “Few rhinestones around this part.”

At that, Jensen can't help laughing. “Dude, I will screen the shirt – paint it up all you want – but I am not gonna glue a damn rhinestone on it.”

“Why not?” Jared's chuckling, too, shuffling through the stack. “Your girlfriend doesn't like rhinestones?”

He opens his mouth, but Danneel interrupts. “He doesn't have a girlfriend.” She smirks when Jensen glares in her direction. He likes her plenty, but sometimes she should learn to keep her mouth shut. “Jared, a couple of the girls up at the front have some questions for you.”

She's gone again when Jared tosses a third screen toward Jensen. “I like that one. If you make black the main color, and then dry brush it with the silver and white, I think it'll look alright.” He stands, but his eyes are watching Jensen for a reaction. 

“Will the shirt still be pink?” Jensen asks, holding the screen in one hand while watching the shirt in disgust. It's not just eye-stabbing pink. It's also a girls' size medium. 

Jared just laughs again in response and heads over to the table at the front of the room. Begrudgingly, Jensen follows the technique, just as Jared explained it at the beginning of the class, and he can't deny that it does, indeed, look alright. Well, it doesn't look like an elementary school art project or anything.

“Give it to your sister as a Christmas present,” Danneel suggests, after an agonizing minute of critical examination.

With a huff, Jensen stands and holds his paint-covered screen between his fingers. “I'm gonna rinse this out, and then I'm outta here.” While he can't deny he'd love to stay and ogle the hot teacher, Jared has been too busy helping all of the other kids in the room to make his way back over, and Jensen will be damned if he's going to stand around looking creepy for anyone.

He's packing his laptop into his messenger bag in his second floor office when a voice sounds at the door. “You left your shirt on the table.”

Jensen freezes. Jared can't be in his office. He's supposed to be downstairs, helping Danneel clean up or something. “Nah, man. It's yours.” He turns, and Jared just smirks. “Hi,” Jensen greets, awkward wave accompanying his greeting.

Jared pushes off the door frame while he looks around Jensen's sparsely decorated office. “Minimalist, huh?” With a nod, he meets Jensen's eye again. “I like it.” 

“Yeah,” Jensen nods in agreement, though he's not entirely sure what Jared just said. He wasn't paying attention so much to the words as he was the way Jared's hair brushes over his jaw. Jensen's a smart guy – well-read, educated, and traveled – so there's really no reason for one hard body and a set of dimples to render him so completely stupid. 

“How long you worked here, Jensen?” Jared leans against Jensen's desk, arms crossed over his chest and an amused smile playing on his lips.

Licking his lips, Jensen fidgets a little, trying to find a stance that isn't completely awkward. Which, of course, only makes him look more awkward in the end. “Three years now?” He knows it's been three years, but it still comes out sounding like a question, a request for approval or something. 

With a nod, Jared stands and drops the tee shirt onto Jensen's desk before moving his hands to his pockets. “Wanna give me a tour?”

“Of what?” It's such a stupid question, so worthy of smacking himself in the head, that Jensen nearly does just that. Jared's grin only grows, and Jensen shakes his head, determines to stop being such an idiot and at least attempt to sound normal. “You want a tour of the library?”

Jared nods once and then shrugs, a ' _why the hell not?_ ' kind of gesture. “Been awhile since I've been here.”

As Jensen shows him around the biography and audio book sections, Jared explains that he grew up around here, but that he moved away for college. He met a guy that spun his head around, tried his hand at opening his own boutique, wrote a couple of craft books, and did a few public access, how-to shows. 

“Sounds like quite the life,” Jensen exhales, leading Jared in a wide circle around the computer lab. It doesn't take much to give a tour of the library, after all. Everything's pretty well-labeled, and he gets the feeling Jared didn't really want to know where the New Fiction section was anyway. Jensen's just glad his heart has stopped hammering in his chest, and he's finding that this incredibly hot guy is actually pretty cool to talk to, so maybe he should just stop questioning everything in his own head and enjoy it.

Jared's quite for a minute, stopping to run his hand over the top of one of the computer monitors. “It was alright. I mean, I was no Bob Ross or anything,” he quirks another one of those smiles in Jensen's direction, but this one is a little sad, “but I liked my life, ya know? Which is kind of the point of having one, if you ask me.”

It's such a basic philosophy, but it strikes Jensen as incredibly poignant. “So what happened?”

They leave the computer lab, and Jensen follows as Jared moves around the circulation desk and over toward the stacks. For the most part, Jensen has let the streetlights flooding through the library's massive windows illuminate their tour, but it's going to be too dark back in the stacks for that. Still, Jensen only flicks two switches, the rows of florescents closest to them humming to life, before he heads down the row where Jared just disappeared.

Over his shoulder, eyes drifting over the Mysteries, Jared answers, “Found out my ex was funneling cash from my business fund. I mean, there wasn't a ton of it to begin with, but enough for him to take his secretary on a couple of really nice vacation weekends when he was supposed to be on business trips.”

“Ouch.” 

Jared nods his agreement. “Yeah. So I moved back home, in with my mom, and I'm just tryin' to get back on my feet, ya know?”

Silence falls between them while they meander through General Fiction, past a row of periodical back-issues, and between shelves of books on the first and second World wars. Twenty minutes ago, it would have been unnerving, and probably more-than-a-little awkward. Right now, it's kind of nice and Jensen's glad, for the first time, that he showed up tonight.

They've just turned down the row of Classic Literature when Jared stops short and spins on his heel to look Jensen over. “I really wanna kiss you right now,” he blurts out. For the first time, the faintest hint of a blush seeps up his neck, toward his ears. Scratching his hand over the back of his neck, he chuckles, short and sharp. “Hell, I been wantin' to kiss you all night.”

Jensen thinks maybe it's a dream. Of course, in his dreams, the guy with the amazing body is usually naked. Though, now that he's thinking about it, sinking to his knees and pulling Jared's pants to the floor right here wouldn't be such a terrible visual. Jared could lean his shoulders back, maybe pull one of those books off the shelf, oh-so-casual, and pretend to read while Jensen licks and sucks him like they have all the time in the world. 

He has to bite his lip to keep the groan from escaping his throat, and press his hand tight against his thigh inside the pocket of his jeans to keep from shifting awkwardly at the definitively inappropriate direction his thoughts are going to take if he doesn't stop thinking and say something.

With a smile that feels pained, but he hopes looks somewhat unaffected, he shrugs and leans against the poetry books at his back. “I don't know, man. What would my _girlfriend_ think?”

Jared's laugh is a little too loud, given the echoing silence of the deserted library. “Man, I was tryin' to be subtle.”

Shaking his head, it's Jensen turn to run his hand over the back of his neck before he looks up to meet Jared's amused, if not embarrassed, smile. “Yeah, well, I think kissing me would have been more subtle than that.”

He can joke about it now, but if Jared had kissed him back in that room full of little girls, he probably would have passed out, or something equally manly. 

There's no time to process that thought, however, because Jared surges forward and grips his shoulder, pressing their mouths together in a kiss that's almost a little too eager, just this side of too rough. It's shocking, even though he kind of warned Jensen it was coming, but by the time his hand is sliding up the side of Jensen's neck, he's settling into the contact.

It goes on a little too long for a first kiss, and Jensen's having a little bit of trouble breathing when Jared pulls back, but he's not going to complain or anything. He doesn't know when his eyes closed, but when they lazily open again, Jared's thumb is running over Jensen's bottom lip and his smile is blinding. 

“Hi,” Jared mimics Jensen's greeting from earlier, and Jensen just rolls his eyes. “You wanna go grab a cup of coffee or somethin'?”

Jensen figures that his first instinct – to kiss Jared again in the hopes of getting around to that fantasy he just had – could probably be construed as jumping the proverbial gun. What he really wants is to invite Jared back to his place, but the guy isn't that far removed from a bad relationship, and Jensen doesn't want to spook him, even if he did just express his interest in Jensen by shoving him against a shelf of romantic poetry and kissing him momentarily stupid.

With a nod, Jensen steps to the side and tries to put a little bit of distance between himself and Jared's soap-and-aftershave scent. It's a little dizzying. “Let me grab my bag and we'll get outta here.”

Jared follows him back to his office, and Jensen tries to pretend that he's not too excited about the way this night has turned out. He dates, but it's been awhile since the prospect of coffee with a guy has made him this happy. 

“Man, you forgot it again,” Jared teases, grabbing the shirt from Jensen's desk after Jensen has already turned for the door.

He considers telling Jared to just drop the damn thing into the trash can by the door on their way out, but Jensen's just high enough on the euphoria of this night's unexpected turn of events that he yanks it out of Jared's hand and stuffs the shirt into his bag. 

If Jensen's lucky, it might turn into a pretty funny reminder of the start of something really great.


End file.
